About 75% OF the acres around me still aren’t no-tilled. I can’t blame them. It wasn’t the easiest change to make, but it’s well worth it in my opinion.

David Wessel isn’t afraid to make the most out of every no-till acre, whether it’s rich, black gumbo, timber or sandy soils, or anything in between.

An ancestor of the Leroy Bupp’s family likely started farming the land in Seven Valleys, Pa. Bupp currently farms on acres that were originally farmed around the time the 13 colonies declared independence from Britain. Of course, much has changed over the years.

No-till adoption didn’t happen overnight for the Forkner family, but after several years of seeing positive results it’s not likely they’d ever go back to conventional tillage.

Mistakes have led to more than one production practice that has paid off on our farm. Replanting hailed out crops resulted in our current twin-row planting strategy and a load of fertilizer I couldn’t send back helped us achieve soybean crops capable of winning yield contests. In fact, in three out of the last five years I’ve had the highest yields for the local Pioneer yield contest and one of those years I won the territory. No-till wasn’t an accident, but some unintended lessons helped prove it was the right fit for our farm.

Two decades of reduced tillage have helped the Rotenberger family improve soil health and address some daunting residue challenges posed by their cropping rotations.

Crop prices may be down, but that isn’t stopping no-tillers from using cover crops. In fact, more no-tillers are seeding them than ever before — No-Till Farmer’s 2016 No-Till Operational Benchmark Study found a record 77% of survey respondents seeded covers last year (see page 42), making 2016 the fifth consecutive year where the number increased.

Although farm equipment manufacturers have engineers specifically charged to design and build no-till planters that efficiently place seed in the ground at the optimum depth, in a variety of field conditions, it’s difficult to find a no-tiller running a truly “bone stock” OEM planter.

When Tim Waltz first tried no-till in 1983 as a demonstration for a local farm show, it was a dry year and the results weren't impressive.